Spectacular Pumpkin Macaroni Dish

There are certain ingredients that I return to again and again in these pages because our ancestors depended on them for sustenance. One is the pumpkin. You may remember the paean to pumpkin I quoted last year in the article calling pumpkins, Survival Food on the Ohio Frontier.

Stead of pottage and puddings and custards and pies Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies, We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon, If it were not for pumpkins we should be undoon.

The recipe for pumpkin macaroni and cheese that I am sharing today has no other relation to pioneers other than the fact that it is a pumpkin. I found this on the cooking site of my friend Stephanie Stiavetti last year, and such a delicious recipe deserves to be shared.

If you are looking for a really spectacular dish to put on your holiday table–this pumpkin stuffed with macaroni and cheese fills the bill. Not only that, it only looks fancy. It is really a very easy recipe–once you get the darned strings and seeds out of the pumpkin.

Be sure to read the notes with the pumpkin macaroni and cheese recipe to get some more ideas about how you can make the recipe your own. Cook like our ancestors. Use what you have on hand.

Pie Pumpkins

And keep in mind when our great-grandmothers cooked pumpkin, they weren’t cooking those thin-walled, tasteless things that we’ve been buying to carve jack-o-lanterns. Their pumpkins were smaller and meatier and tastier. It is only in more recent times that the taste and bake-ability was bred out of pumpkins. Now, fortunately, you can get the good cooking pumpkins once again.

When the pumpkin is done--just beginning to yield to a fork on the inside, but not mushy--take it out of oven and fill with the pasta filling

2nd Baking

7.

Scoop filling into pumpkin or pumpkins and pour cream over. Put top back on. Return to oven and bake one hour for one large pumpkin, or 45 minutes for smaller ones. Fifteen minutes before finished, remove top to let the filling brown slightly. If it seems too liquid, let continue to bake another 10-15 minutes.

Serving

8.

Serve sliced in sections, or scoop out the inside, including some of the pumpkin in each serving.

Make ahead

9.

Stephanie at www.theculinarylife.com suggests you can make the filling ahead of time and refrigerate until the day of the dinner. Then bake the pumpkin and fill as directed above.

Note

Besides being the most beautiful dish you can put on your Halloween or Thanksgiving table, this recipe is a gift to the cook because it is quite easy to make and very flexible.

Cheese: Stephanie Stiavetti, whose website Http://www. theculinarylife was my source (from which I deviated freely), suggests using 5 ounces of Fontina and two ounces of Gruyere. I did make it that way and it was deliciously creamy.

I also tried it with 5 ounces of Gouda and 3 ounces of Asiago. Stephanie basically says "use whatever you have on hand", mentioning cheddar, Monterey Jack, Swiss cheese, Jarlsberg. Another person made it with aged cheddar and chorizo and chipotle. Do your own thing!

Herbs: The same advice holds true for the herbs. I grow a few herbs, so used what I had--fresh thyme, marjoram and oregano. We don't care for sage, which was part of Stephanie's rosemary, thyme and sage suggestion.

Cream: I used half and half this time, but did follow Stephanie's instructions to use heavy cream the first time I made the recipe. It all depends on how adventurous you are feeling, although admittedly the heavy cream adds a lot to the creamy texture.

The only place where I would definitely not compromise is in the use of a pie pumpkin or sugar pumpkin instead of a jack-o-lantern pumpkin. The thicker-walled baking pumpkins are becoming easier to find in stores, and are far superior for baking to the pumpkins bred for carving with their emphasis on thinner walls and little taste.

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About Vera Marie Badertscher

I am a grandma and was named for my grandma. I've been an actress, a political strategist and a writer.I grew up in various places, went to high school in Killbuck, Ohio and graduated from Ohio State University. My husband and I moved to Arizona after graduation and have three adult children. I love to travel and read--and have another website for that called A Traveler's Library. I ponder family as I cook.

Ashamed to admit until last year I didn’t realize what all the fuss was about “pie pumpkins.” Except that I knew I had once tried to make a pumpkin pie from one of those other ones and it was awful. Thanks SO MUCH for this recipe!